Shakir Hamoodi
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LINKS

Help Commute
Shakir's Sentence
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Shakir Hamoodi's
Website
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Hamoodi Family Caught in Sanctions Nightmare
(PRI's The World)
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Chert Hollow Farms
on Shakir Hamoodi
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Steve Jacobs
on Shakir Hamoodi
(Columbia Tribune)
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Aline Kultgen
on Shakir Hamoodi>
(Columbia Missourian)
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Cathy Salter
on Shakir Hamoodi
(Columbia Tribune)
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Hamoodi Supporters
Gather at Rock Bridge Christian Church
(Columbia Missourian)
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Iraq War Sanctions
Run Amok
(The Daily Beast)
 

 
Remarks on the Sentencing of Shakir Hamoodi
for Violating Sanctions of Iraq
 
Veterans for Peace Memorial Day Peace Gathering
 
Columbia, Missouri, May 28, 2012
 
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My name is Tom Sager. There is a petition circulating asking clemency for Shakir Hamoodi. Shakir violated the sanctions placed on Iraq between 1991 and 2003 by sending money to his family in Iraq and others in need. For this he has been sentenced to three years in prison. Please consider signing this petition.

I want to tell you about the first time I met Shakir. In 1997 a woman from St. Louis, Mira Tanna, who some of you know, came to Columbia to speak of her recent trip to Iraq. Mira had spent ten days in Iraq with Voices in the Wilderness, Kathy Kelly's organization, bearing witness to the effects of sanctions on the Iraqi people. She told of children dying in large numbers from lack of basic necessities: medicines, clean water, food, sewage disposal. I was incredulous. If things are so bad, I thought, why have I heard nothing of this? Surely this is an exaggeration.

When she finished, a middle-aged man stepped onto the stage and asked if he could say a few words. "I was born in Iraq, and I have family in Iraq," Shakir began, "I want to tell you that everything you have heard today, everything, is true."

I resolved to go to Iraq and find out for myself, and two years later, I got my chance. I will tell you one story. We were in the children's ward of a major hospital; and a doctor was talking about severe shortages of everything: medicines, clean water, electricity. I looked around the ward and focused on a little boy, maybe 3 months old. He had a needle in his wrist; but was receiving no fluids. He lay on a cot, his eyes closed. As I watched, he opened his eyes and screwed up his face as if to cry; but no sound came out. He was too dehydrated and to weak to cry. He was dying before my eyes.

I interrupted the doctor. "Why is this boy not receiving intravenous fluids? Without them, he will die."

"We gave him fluids this morning," replied the doctor. "He did not respond." The doctor resumed his talk. Intravenous fluids were in very short supply. He had received his share. There would be no more for him, and he would die. I watched helplessly as the boy tried again to cry; and failed. This was not a statistic, not a story retold; this was a real live infant dying before my eyes.

Is it a crime to try to help a child like this? Or were the sanctions that killed 5,000 Iraqi children each month the real crime? I returned to Iraq four times with Veterans for Peace Iraq Water Project, each time bringing medicines and medical supplies, and each time openly risking fines and prison sentences from my own government.

Shakir Hamoodi is the only one to have received a prison sentence for breaking sanctions. Why? Perhaps, because he stood up at that event 15 years ago, and many, many times since, and explained to us so clearly what our government is doing to his people. Perhaps, that is the crime he will go to prison for.

I have a question for the judge who sentenced Shakir. When your Judge asks you, "What crime did that little boy dying of dehydration commit, that he should be left to die and those who tried to help him thrown in prison?" what will you say?

Please consider signing the petition asking clemency for Shakir Hamoodi.

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